Doctor Horrible Merrily Rolls Along

I’m not trying to turn this into a Doctor Horrible blog, I’m really not. But the second episode is up, and it is awesome.

Comic creator Ted Naifeh has a mini-rant about how a creative talent, after they have an initial success, often follow it up with their dream project. Then, more often than not, suddenly free from corporate control, they indulge in a creative orgy, inevitably robbing the dream project of whatever it was that made it work the first time around. Examples? The Matrix, and the Riddick movie.

Doctor Horrible seems to be wearing its total creative freedom without the need to resort to a thousand digital Buffys. But the web is a more personal medium that. Unlike television, it doesn’t need to to try and be everything for everybody to be considered a success. To put it another way: on the internet the audience finds you (not unlike in the Soviet Union).

I’m a very traditional storyteller, and I’m in no way Internet savvy, but I did appreciate the elasticity of the medium. The story was also geared toward the Internet audience — and not just by putting “blog” in the title. The fact that Dr. Horrible does blog is part of his character, which is the guy alone in his room ranting about the world not being the way it should. We’re long past the age of “everybody on the Internet watches ‘Star Trek’ and lives in their parents’ basement,” but there is a modern societal truth about the kind of guy who needs to tell the world his troubles and show off his talents. And I relate to that guy. Neil’s blogs wouldn’t work in the same way if they weren’t coming from your computer screen.